The virtual shelter is an ongoing project that was initiated during the Tactical Media Lab (TML) that took place in Amsterdam as a preparation event for the, Next5Minutes4 festival which will take place in Amsterdam in mid 2003. During this laboratory of tactical media practitioners in Amsterdam Southeast a group of refugees and tactical media makers meet on a daily basis to develop ideas for a virtual shelter for refugees.

While initially refugee agencies and 'centers' were contacted in order to mobilize participants for the workshops (they had said that they would pass on information to refugees and that they were confident that there would be interest) none of the refugees attending the first workshops had gotten the word via them (rather they received the information through other more personal networks). Generally the view among refugees attending the workshops was that none of these agencies were to be trusted and this was also the source of their desire to create a source of reliable information to be managed by refugees themselves as they were the ones with the most at stake. This demand lead towards the conclusion that one of the core elements of a virtual shelter should be a "frequently asked questions" section for refugees. The idea was and is to compile questions that refugees coming to the Netherlands face and to provide answers to them. The answers should be provided by refugees in cooperation with 'agencies' or other holders of specialized information and made available on the website of the virtual shelter project. During the workshops four other potential functions of a virtual shelter had been identified: presenting news about issues that are effecting refugees in the Netherlands, providing the possibility for refugees to present their stories to a wider audience, the implementation of a skill sharing application (similar to the expertbase which had been presented during the TML) and, of course, a chat function that would enable refugees in different parts of the country to communicate in real time with each other.

After the TML a core group of the refugees agreed to continue working on the project and to implement the desired functions. This group of refugees is currently meeting on a weekly basis. They are supported by two non-refugees who provide them with technical and journalistic assistance. Aside from working on the virtual shelter web platform these working sessions are also used to exchange media and computer skills among the participants.

Currently the work focuses on the frequently asked questions section of the website. A list of such questions has been compiled and answers are being assembled in cooperation with representatives of trusted refugee agencies and others. Parallel to this more editorial task the group is working on a website that will enable them to present these frequently asked questions and the other envisaged modules on the Internet. The main concern in this part of the project is focused at creating a robust content management system that can be used by a divers team of contributors.

There are two main challenges that are facing the group at the moment. On the one hand they intend to broaden the scope of the editorial team, but so far the efforts to reach more participants via refugee agencies or personal contacts have had limited success. On reason is that the majority of refugees can't afford to come to Amsterdam once per week to participate in the meetings. It is hoped that once the website is up and running so that the intentions and achievements of the project become more visible and the tools for online collaboration can be used.

The other challenge concerns the use of different languages. Currently all work on for the website is being done in English, however it is clear that a project such as this needs to take into account the diversity of languages that are being spoken in the refugee community. The intention is to offer as many languages as possible on the website but to stick to English as a common language that is used for navigation between the different sections of the website. Whether a particular piece of information on the website will be available in a particular language would then be depended on the fact if someone can be found to translate it. Currently the group is investigating the possibilities to make information in Arabic (and other non Latin characters) available on the website. As Arabic is an important language in the Dutch 'refugee community' this issue has been raised multiple times during the whole virtual shelter process. A satisfying solution, however, has yet to be found.